It was inevitable that bombers that were hit would also crash in built-up areas, causing civilian casualties. This was the fate of Woensel on the night of 28 August 1942.

Around 00:30 hours, Vickers Wellington Z1245 of the Polish 305 Squadron crashed into a farm and houses along the Woenselsestraat, between the Beekstraat and the Eckartse Heiweg.

Wim Renders (13) and four members of the Van Liempt family, father Petrus (59), mother Wilhelmina (55) and their daughters Catharina (30) and Maria (22), were killed.

The aircraft had left home base Hemswell at 20:45 hours for a flight to Kassel. On the way back, the Wellington was attacked by a German night fighter, flown by Hauptmann Siegfried Wandam. Polish pilot Jan Pytlak managed to keep the bomber in the air long enough to give his navigator Antoni Kiewnarski and bombardier Tadeuz Frankowski the chance to escape with their parachutes.

It then crashed without a rudder on the Woenselsestraat, killing Pytlak, radio operator Feliks Gawlak and air gunner Jozef Janik. They found their final resting place nearby at the Woensel cemetery in graves JJ-117, 118 and 119.

Flight Lieutenant Kiewnarski landed in the municipality of Son and was immediately taken prisoner of war. He ended up in the POW camp Stalag Luft III in Zagan in his German-occupied homeland of Poland.

At the end of March 1944, the famous ‘great escape’ took place there, in which 76 POW pilots, including Kiewnarski, managed to escape from the camp via a tunnel. Only three of them, two Norwegians and the Dutchman Bob van der Stok, managed to reach allied territory. On Hitler's orders, 50 of the escapees were shot as a deterrent example. Among them was Kiewnarski, who was executed on 31 March 1944. He is buried in Poznań in Poland.

Sergeant Frankowski also landed nearby, but managed to escape from the Germans. He walked to Belgium in a few nights and decided to ask for help there. Members of the Belgian and French resistance helped him to Bordeaux. After crossing the Pyrenees on foot, he reached neutral Spain on 29 September and was back in England a month later. He continued to live there after the war and died in 1996.